Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy

Posted by John Loose on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy When Lancaster County was established on May 10, 1729, it became the proto­type for the sixty-three counties to follow. The original three counties­Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester – were created as copies of typical English shires. The frontier conditions of Ches­ter County’s backwoods, from which Lancaster was formed, presented knot­ty problems to the civilized English­men....
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A Country Seat on the Susquehanna: Wright’s Ferry Mansion

Posted by Elizabeth Schaefer on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Country Seat on the Susquehanna: Wright’s Ferry Mansion On the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River in southeastern Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Lancaster, Wright’s Ferry Man­sion was built in 1738 for a remarkable English Quaker, Susanna Wright. In 1726, when Susanna was twenty-nine, she purchased one hundred acres in this region on the fringes of Pennsylvania wilderness, then inhabited by a small tribe of Indians and known as...
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When the Susquehanna River Was Pennsylvania’s Flour Highway

Posted by Earl Brown on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on When the Susquehanna River Was Pennsylvania’s Flour Highway The flour trade industry in the Susquehanna River watershed is one of the lesser known stories in Pennsylvania’s history, but it is among its most significant sagas. Millers were among the first tradesmen to arrive in the New World to sustain the settlers. The Keystone State’s rich farmlands produced abundant flour for local and regional markets with a consistent surplus for export to foreign...
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